INDIA.
India. By Mortimer Menpes and Flora Annie Steel. (A. and C. Black. 20s. net.)—Few people know the real India, its immo- bility, its tragedy and romance, better than does Mrs. Steel, and none but a vivid colourist could do justice to the pictorial aspect of Indian life. Yet gorgeous as are Mr. Menpes's impressions—he simply revels in the yellow walls and the violet shadows of Jeypore—one sees India more through the insight and detail of Mrs. Steel. How vividly she brings before us the decayed Mohammedans, the goldsmiths and the gold- thread workers, the potter, and many other artisans whom hereditary aptitude has converted into so many masters of their craft ! She takes up the cudgels for the women of India and for Indian morality generally, and here she has every right to be heard, though we think she is a little too fond of making com- parisons. Again, could any chapter be more fascinating and stirring than her account of the Rajputs and the story of the Great Moguls ? Nor could those who have not seen an Indian bazaar wish for a better guide. But good wine needs no bush ; and readers will feel at once the sympathetic enthusiasm, and the even more striking sympathetic vision, which enable Mrs. Steel to reveal to us the Indian races as few other Western writers can. As for Mr. Menpes's drawings, he is in his element in India. The kaleidoscope of colour afforded by the bazaar stalls gives him an opportunity for detail he makes the most of.
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